You’ve been comparing yourself to others your whole life. It causes you to feel like you’re not enough and get down on yourself. It makes you feel like life is a black hole – no matter how much you do, you always seem to come up short compared to others.
There’s always someone with more Instagram followers, more money, and more success. People younger than you get to where you want to be sooner than you, and it feels extraordinarily painful – not because you’re a hater or because you’re rooting against others, but because it reminds you of your own inadequacies and failures.
Comparison Never Seems to End
To make matters worse, you know comparing yourself to others is bad – but you can’t stop doing it. Everywhere you look is a reminder of how you’re coming up short. Another email from someone you don’t remember subscribing to talking about how they made $39,467 in a single weekend doing what they love when that’s roughly what you make in a year after taxes. Another YouTube ad from a “guru” promising you that you’re only one course away from ultimate success (you’ve been purchasing and taking these courses for years, and yet you always seem to be one course away from where you need to be, like a receding horizon). Another LinkedIn post from one of your connections about how successful they are, making you feel like complete garbage.
No exaggeration: it feels like you’re in an endless hell. You start judging yourself for not being able to stop comparing yourself to others, making you feel even worse about yourself, which in turn causes you to compare yourself again.
Wait…There’s More
It seemed like we got to the bottom of the rabbit hole as far as your comparison woes, but the Mariana Trench goes deeper.
You feel stuck in your job and career. Even when you’re not triggered by the outside world, you’re often feeling a sense of insecurity, incompleteness, and dull sense of anxiety that you’re somehow living below your potential. As if the successful strangers in the outside world weren’t enough to get you down, there are coworkers of yours who seem to get promoted and rewarded for their bad behavior. Yet what you do and your hard work is not noticed nearly enough.
Your friends and colleagues seem to have perfect relationships, yet yours is falling apart at the seams.
This sucks, doesn’t it?
You Are Enough Even When It Seems Like You’re Not
Before going further, lets acknowledge that society doesn’t make it any easier for you. There’s always some sort of seductive advertisement reminding you that you’re not enough as you are.
The truth is you ARE good enough. You are whole and complete exactly as you are. But me saying this isn’t going to magically take away the seemingly endless insecurity you have. You need to move your attention away from your head and to your heart. You need to rewire yourself at a core cellular level.
Remind Yourself of These Truths
You’ve been through comparison hell way more times than you care to admit. You want to be happy for your friends, but it’s so hard when your life doesn’t seem to adequately compare to theirs.
Through awareness, you can start to pull yourself out of this black hole. It’s not easy, and it’s going to take an unbelievable amount of patiently, repetitively reminding yourself of these truths, but it’s possible.
In regards to the people you’re comparing yourself to:
- You don’t know their backstory and their success may have been handed to them. Not everyone gets a $10 million loan from their father as Donald Trump did.
- They very well may be successful in one area and total disasters in another. They may seemingly be way ahead in one area of life, but seriously lack what you have in other areas. They also may be frauds and not practicing what they preach. That relationship expert with women swooning around him? Behind the scenes, he’s going through a divorce. That finance expert who seems to understand all of the financial markets down to a tee? He’s deeply in debt right now. That speaker who passionately preaches kindness? He beats his kids and verbally abuses them when no one is watching. That multi-level marketer who has you drooling at the mouth about the “work on the beach” lifestyle? His company is currently being investigated by the authorities for fraud. This doesn’t mean everyone is a fraud, but it does mean many people are not who they say they are. It’s all-too-easy to be fooled.
- Different people have other purposes and are therefore meant to do different things. The people you’re comparing yourself to are impacting a certain group of people, but you’re meant to impact other people (or to impact the same people in another way). You have a distinctive purpose and a divergent path. It’s easier said than done to remember this, but it’s a belief you can install in yourself with practice.
- Many people achieve their dreams only to find out it’s nothing as to what they expected it to be. As Ralph Waldo Emerson said, “Envy is ignorance.” And as George Bernard Shaw said, “There are two great tragedies in life. One is not to get your heart’s desire. The other is to get it.” The people you envy and feel like you don’t measure up against are struggling in ways you may never know. The career you’re fantasizing about may not be what it’s cracked up to be. There are professional speakers who are entirely miserable due to the endless travel, yet everyone thinks they’re living the dream.
- As speaker Dananjaya Hettiarachchi says, don’t worry if you haven’t come into your prime yet. People bloom at different times in their lives. If you’re a late bloomer, you’re going to bloom much bigger, bolder, and brighter than people who bloomed sooner than you – this is especially true when following your passions and dreams. And this is true even if it feels like, at this moment, there’s no light at the end of the tunnel. Don’t let the darkness deceive you. There is light, my friend.
- As you compare yourself to others, remember that others are also comparing themselves to you. There may always be someone doing better than you, but there’s also always someone doing worse. Despite their facades and fronts, people are struggling just as much as you are – they just don’t often show their behind-the-scenes and insecurities. This includes the so-called “successful” people.
- Being sincerely happy for others is in no way a negative reflection of your own state in life.
There’s No Easy Solution Here When It Comes to the Nasty Habit of Comparing Yourself But Stay Vigilantly Aware
To reiterate when I said earlier: comparing yourself to others is a vicious cycle and isn’t going to suddenly stop. You need to remind yourself of the truths in this post time and time again, and then time again after that. It starts with awareness and ends with awareness. Stay mindful, as an untended mind is a breeding ground for self-defeat.
Be aware that the feeling is real, but the why is a lie. Your doubt, insecurity, and comparison to others tell you that you’re not good enough because you don’t measure up to them. The truth is that there’s nothing to measure up to, as you’re on an infinitely unique path – destined to bloom in Divine timing. You’re not here on the planet to be like anyone else.
You are a precious bumblebee, pollinating the plants you’re meant to pollinate. There’s literally no need to compare yourself to that big moth who has a posse of moth followers but ultimately doesn’t have your substance, style, and suave bumblebee-esque demeanor. The moth is doing what it’s supposed to do, but you need to remember that you’re special and unique in your own right.
I know you better than you think. You’re nodding and resonating with this post. And then ten minutes from now, you’ll get triggered and compare yourself to someone else again. At that moment, to stop feeling bad about yourself, remember this: the comparison game is an utter illusion, as there was nothing to compare, to begin with. You are on YOUR unique journey, and that deserves to be celebrated. You are quintessentially you, and no one in all of human history has your exact characteristics, life story, and combination of talents.
This doesn’t mean that you’re smarter, or wiser, or better than anyone else in any way, but it does mean that there’s no longer any need to feel bad about yourself.
Jeff Davis is an award-winning author, most recently publishing The Power of Authentic Leadership: Activating the 13 Keys to Achieving Prosperity Through Authenticity. He’s also an authentic leadership keynote speaker and Executive Coach to leaders and CEOs, offering individualized coaching. Follow him on Twitter.
